DECISION RECORD FOR LEADERSHIP TEAMS
Make the Call Once.Know Who Owns It.Remember Why.
Ketsudan gives your leadership team one process for the decisions that have consequences. Each one gets an owner, options weighed against doing nothing, input gathered privately, and an explanation of the choice.
Free for three decisions. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.
SOUND FAMILIAR
Decision's are harder to make than they should be....
If you founded the company
- "Everything goes through me."
- "Every time I step out, it either doesn't get made or it gets made badly."
- "We agreed this in March. Why are we discussing it again?"
If you run the leadership rhythm
- "Half my job is finding out what we decided."
- "The meeting ended with 'let's take this offline' and nobody took it anywhere."
- "Who actually owns this?"
If you advise leadership teams
- "I advise on a decision and never find out how it landed."
- "Between sessions I'm working from what they remember of what happened."
- "Half the value of my advice depends on follow-through I can't see."
Your people are fine. The process just lives in one person's head, and that person can't be in every meeting.
PROCESS CHECK
Most decisions should just be made.
Not every call deserves a process. Some of the best decisions are made quickly and course corrected if a better option becomes clear. Asking your team to put every decision through Ketsudan would create friction that shouldn't exist in their process. Ketsudan recognises this and starts every decision with a Process Check that separates the decisions worth running properly from the ones you should make now and move on from.
Choosing the engine supplier for your racing team has impact.
Process Check
Gate: sets precedent
The selection of a Power Unit partner is a foundational architectural commitment that dictates the team's technical trajectory for years.
precedent coupling
A Power Unit choice locks in the car's cooling, packaging, and transmission architecture for a multi-year cycle.
detectability
Performance deficits in a Power Unit are highly visible but cannot be corrected mid-season due to technical regulations.
magnitude vs capacity
As a middle team, the commercial and technical success of this partnership is central to two of the three primary revenue streams: prize money and sponsorship.
What would change your mind?
Would a specific partner's integration requirements fundamentally limit our aerodynamic development ceiling compared to other options?
Changing coffee suppliers doesn't need to take your teams time.
Process Check
This is a low-stakes office amenity choice with no impact on racing performance or financial stability.
magnitude vs capacity
The cost of an office coffee machine is negligible for a 200-500 person global racing team.
detectability
If the machine is unsatisfactory, it is easily replaced or upgraded with minimal disruption.
What would change your mind?
Is there a specific technical requirement or maintenance contract that makes this choice unusually complex for this office?
THE LIFECYCLE
A consistent process to build your organisations decision muscle.
Every decision follows the same path, so nobody has to remember how your team decides.
Write it down before the meeting
A decision starts as a written draft: the problem, the background, and what success looks like. Templates cover the common decision types to speed up the process. An AI assistant helps you frame it and points out missing context, and a bias check reviews the framing before the room starts arguing about it.
Start from a template
Templates seed your framing, success criteria, and starting alternatives so you can focus on the decision itself. Choose Start from blank for a clean form.
Start from blank
Fill in every field yourself.
Illustrative example
Do we build our own billing system or buy one?
Name who decides
Ketsudan is built on the belief that one person should be defined as the owner of each decision in a business. The process ensures everyone is heard and that alternatives are generated and explored, but if concensus is needed then the outcome will be slow and accountability for the outcomes easy to shirk.
Participants (4)
Charlie Whitfield(Creator)
Decision MakerMarco Pellegrini
ConsultantVince Morello
Decision ApproverPriya Chakraborty
Consultant
Never a one-option decision
Poor decision making is often tied to an ineffective exploration of the alternatives. Ketsudan ensures that alternatives are added and analysed either generate your own, ask for AI-generated options, or bring them in from your own AI assistant. Anything AI had a hand in is clearly flagged as either AI generated or received via MCP.
AI-Generated Alternatives
Select alternatives to add to your decision.
Establish an Independent Powertrain Technical Hub
Risk: 62%Instead of a standard customer deal, Hawthorne Racing invests in a dedicated facility to modify and integrate third-party engine components. This allows the team to maintain chassis autonomy while optimising the cooling and packaging of a supplied unit to fit their specific aerodynamic philosophy.
Pros
- Retains full control over driver selection and chassis development
- Reduces the performance gap caused by generic customer packaging
- Avoids the political influence of a works partnership
Cons
- Significant upfront capital expenditure for technical facilities
- Higher risk of reliability issues due to custom integration
- Requires hiring specialised engineers in a competitive market
Optimal Conditions
The team must have sufficient liquid capital to fund the facility and the ability to recruit top-tier integration engineers before the 2027 season.
Data Needs
Comparative analysis of chassis-to-engine integration efficiency and thermal management data from previous seasons.
Performance-Linked Tiered Partnership
Risk: 30%Negotiate a contract with a supplier that features a base engine fee with significant financial bonuses or penalties tied to engine reliability and horsepower parity. This aligns the supplier's financial incentives directly with Hawthorne Racing's success criteria regarding points and retirements.
Pros
- Protects the budget if engine performance fails to meet benchmarks
- Ensures the supplier prioritises reliability and performance improvements
Cons
- Suppliers may be less willing to share experimental upgrades
- Complex legal and measurement frameworks to administer
Retain the Standard Customer Deal
Risk: 12%Stay on the current supplied package and do nothing for now. The team keeps its existing budget and reliability record, but remains constrained by generic customer packaging and the supplier's own development priorities.
Pros
- No upfront capital outlay and no new hiring risk
- Proven reliability from an established, supported supplier
Cons
- Performance ceiling stays capped by generic customer packaging
- No influence over the supplier's development priorities
Let everyone have their voices heard
Discussion happens inside each decision with a final anonymous vote acting as a data point rather than a fait accompli. However, should the decision maker choose to go against the majority they must explain why.
Do we build our own billing system or buy one?
Problem Statement
Do we build our own billing system or buy one?
Context & Background
Building takes two engineers off the roadmap for two quarters. Billing is not where this company wins.
Success Criteria
Month-end close in three days, with no engineer on billing support
Record the rationale and forecast the outcomes
In making the decision the Decision Maker must explain their reasons and forecast what the decision will mean in 10-days, 10-weeks, and 10 Months. The organisation will always know why the choice was made, what other choices were looked at, and whether the outcome met expectations.
Close voting and record the decision
Illustrative example
Chosen alternative
Decision rationale
Building takes two engineers off the roadmap for two quarters. Billing is not where this company wins.
Tracking
Review close time against the three-day forecast after two quarters
Check whether you were right
At the Tracking stage, you put the forecast from your draft next to what actually happened. Most teams only ever check whether the project shipped. This checks the call.
10-10-10 Framework
Forecast outcomes at 10 days, 10 weeks, and 10 months to reduce short-term bias.
10 Days
How will this decision feel in 10 days?
Expect the heads of agreement to be executed with the 'Technical Firewall' clause still in draft form, as Kagawa's legal team will contest the definition of 'interface requirements' versus 'proprietary chassis IP.' The paddock reaction lands immediately: media framing will oscillate between 'Hawthorne secures works future' and 'Hawthorne surrenders independence,' and the team's ability to control that narrative in the first 72 hours shapes sponsor and staff sentiment for months. Internally, watch for the first early signal from the pre-mortem: any Kagawa engineering request that reaches beyond the agreed interface boundary in week one sets the precedent for how firmly the firewall holds. Driver market speculation will spike, since rivals will assume the non-veto seat is now effectively Kagawa's to fill.
10 Weeks
What will the impact be in 10 weeks?
Dyno correlation work between the Kagawa power unit and the Hawthorne chassis will have produced either confidence or the first integration warnings, particularly around packaging, cooling demands, and vibration profiles that the reliability deficit scenario anticipates. The driver seat negotiation should be resolved or visibly deadlocked by this point; if Kagawa is still pushing a development driver against Hawthorne's preferred candidate, the medium-likelihood deadlock scenario is materialising early.
10 Months
How will this play out over 10 months?
The optimistic case shows the power unit delivering the promised performance ceiling, engine-related retirements at or below the field average, and constructor points tracking ahead of the customer-engine baseline, vindicating the trade of autonomy for hardware. Three or more engine-related retirements in the first half of the season confirms the reliability deficit, a widening gap between the two cars confirms the driver seat compromise is costing points, and staff turnover in engineering signals the cultural clash has become structural.
THE LIMITS
What Ketsudan doesn't do.
It doesn't make the decision.
A named human decides. AI helps you write up the decision and suggest options, and is labelled wherever it contributed.
It doesn't score your options.
There is no weighted formula. Alternatives carry pros, cons and a risk level. The weighing is your team's judgement.
It isn't a project management tool.
Those track tasks and delivery. Ketsudan sits on the decisions that shape the work before it begins.
PRICING
Priced per organisation, not per head.
EARLY ACCESS
US$99 per month, per organisation.
Unlimited decisions. No seat cap. Cancel anytime.
See pricingSEE ONE
What a finished decision looks like.
No sign-up needed. This is an illustrative example of the record your team is left with.
- Decision
- Do we build our own billing system or buy one?
- Decision maker
- Chief Operating Officer
- Consulted
- Head of Engineering, Head of Finance
- Informed
- Leadership team
- Success looks like
- Month-end close in three days, with no engineer on billing support
- Alternatives
- Build in-house (high risk) · Buy and integrate (medium risk) · Do nothing (low risk, problem remains)
- Input
- Gathered privately, voted anonymously
- Decided
- Buy and integrate
- Why
- Building takes two engineers off the roadmap for two quarters. Billing is not where this company wins.
- Tracking
- Review close time against the three-day forecast after two quarters
MCP SERVER
Work on a decision from the conversation you are already in.
Ketsudan is available as an MCP server. Tools like Claude and ChatGPT can read your decisions and add alternatives without leaving the conversation. Anything added this way is flagged as AI-assisted.
Questions leadership teams ask first.
Pick the decision that keeps getting reopened. Start there.
Free for three decisions. Whole team included.
Ketsudan (n.): a decisive choice.